I really wanted my first experience with Xfinity/Comcast to be a good one. Unfortunately, my new-customer installation appointment this morning went so poorly that I cancelled rather than reschedule.
I had a 7:30-8:30 a.m. appointment for new internet service after spending quite a bit of time deciding which provider I wanted to switch to. Signing up as a NEW customer was incredibly fast and easy. I was able to speak with a live person, get everything arranged, and get an appointment quickly. I specifically chose Thursday because I work from home that day and selected the first appointment of the morning to minimize disruption to my workday.
I even got up at 6:30 a.m. to prepare for the technician. I vacuumed behind the furniture, cleaned the wall where my old Dish Network service entered the house, and made sure the existing faceplate and hole through the stucco were accessible. Yes, I even cleaned up the dust bunnies behind the TV because I figured nobody wants to work in someone else's dust bunnies!
Then the Xfinity text updates started.
First, I received a message saying my technician was running EARLY and would arrive at 7:27 a.m. Great! That was exactly why I booked the first appointment.
After 8:00, I received another message saying the technician was running later than expected. Okay, things happen.
Then at 8:18 a.m., I received a message saying the technician was ARRIVING and that I should be ready to greet them. I put my cat in another room and went outside to meet the technician. While I waited, I actually knocked down spiderwebs along the conduit and around the existing cable entry point so the technician wouldn't have to work around spiders and webs.
And I waited.
And waited.
I was outside for approximately 45 minutes. No technician arrived. No Xfinity truck came down my street.
Then I received a message saying, essentially, "Sorry we missed you," with a link to reschedule.
You didn't miss me. I was literally standing outside waiting for you because YOUR text told me your technician was arriving.
That was the point where this went from an inconvenience to an extremely frustrating first impression.
I called Xfinity because I wanted to speak with someone and simply find out what happened. Instead, I ended up in what felt like automated-phone-tree purgatory. Every number seemed to lead back to the same automated system. Eventually I discovered that if I stopped pressing buttons or responding, I could finally reach a live human.
Once I reached an actual person, they were pleasant enough, but they couldn't tell me what happened. There was no explanation for why the technician didn't arrive, why the system reported that the technician WAS arriving, or why I subsequently received a message implying that I hadn't been home.
The only solution offered was to reschedule.
At that point, I declined. I explained that if they could get someone back to my house TODAY, I was willing to continue. Otherwise, after taking time out of my morning for an appointment that Xfinity failed to keep, I wasn't interested in simply starting over with another appointment.
Had someone said, "We had an emergency," "The technician was redirected to an outage," or even simply, "We're sorry, something happened and we can't make your appointment," I would have understood. Things happen. What bothered me was the complete lack of communication and then receiving a "sorry we missed you" message when I had been outside waiting for them.
Adding to the frustration, I was also going to be charged a $100 installation fee. That's difficult to swallow when I'm a brand-new customer bringing new monthly business to the company--and the first installation appointment wasn't even honored.
The irony is that I spent a lot of time researching providers and thought Xfinity was the clear winner. I'm also the type of customer who tends to stay put; I was with my previous provider for approximately 30 years. I wasn't looking to jump from provider to provider.
Now I'm reconsidering the entire decision.
I may stay with my slower copper internet a little longer while I look more seriously at wireless/radio ISP options. Fast internet is important, but so are communication and accessible customer service--especially when something goes wrong.
For a company that made becoming a customer incredibly fast and easy, my first experience trying to actually GET the service was surprisingly difficult.
Basically in closing, if I use Xfinity's own sequence of Xfinity texts it clearly shows my frustration they essentially said :
"We're early!" "We're late!" "We're arriving!" nobody appears "Sorry we missed you." Meanwhile, I was outside once they sent me a text saying go outside and greet my technician and was outside removing spiderwebs for a technician who apparently existed only in text-message form.
Not a great first impression, Xfinity. read more
